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The 2026 annual State of Southeast Asia Survey, released this week by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, has revealed a striking shift in regional sentiment: a slim majority of Southeast Asian respondents now favor China over the United States in a hypothetical choice between the two leading global economic powers, reversing the narrow lead the US held in 2025’s edition of the poll.

Conducted between January 5 and February 20 of this year among 2,008 respondents across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the survey found 52% of participants picked China when asked to choose between the two powers, compared to 48% who selected the US. Stronger support for China was recorded in six ASEAN member states: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Timor-Leste, Thailand and Brunei.

Beyond the head-to-head preference, the gap in perceived economic influence is far wider. Nearly 56% of ASEAN respondents identified China as the most influential economic power in the Southeast Asian region, a figure that dwarfs the 15.3% who named the US as the leading regional economic force. China also retains its position as the most widely recognized political and strategic power in the region, followed by the US and ASEAN itself.

The survey highlights deep growing unease among Southeast Asian observers about the direction of US leadership under the second Trump administration. More than half of respondents — 51.9% — ranked current US leadership as their top geopolitical concern. Analysts note that shifting policy from Washington has eroded regional confidence in US reliability, with tangible economic and geopolitical fallout hitting Southeast Asian economies.

“This year’s survey suggests that the foundations of US influence in Southeast Asia are gradually narrowing,” explained Joanne Lin, senior fellow and coordinator of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s ASEAN Studies Centre and one of the lead authors of the survey. While the result does not signal a total rejection of the US by Southeast Asian nations, it does reflect a growing cautious reevaluation of Washington’s role in the region, Lin noted in commentary published on the institute’s analysis platform Fulcrum.

Scot Marciel, a former US diplomat and senior adviser at consultancy BowerGroupAsia, told a launch webinar for the report that the rising concern stems from dramatic shifts in US foreign policy that have left regional partners uncertain about Washington’s long-term commitments. Examples of US policy actions, including the imposition of sweeping high tariffs and open flouting of established international norms such as interventions in Venezuela earlier this year, have injected widespread uncertainty and triggered direct economic turbulence across Southeast Asian markets, Marciel said.

Notably, Marciel added that the survey concluded before the joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, a development that has already created new economic shockwaves for the region and deepened questions about US global leadership. “The US started the Iran conflict along with Israel, which obviously is having a major impact economically on Southeast Asia, and also raising concerns about what kind of role the US is playing in the region and in the world,” Marciel added.

In contrast to the skepticism facing US policy, the survey finds growing optimism about deeper ties with China. More than 55% of respondents expect their country’s bilateral relations with China to improve or improve significantly over the next three years. That figure stands in sharp contrast to the just 32.8% of respondents who forecast an improvement in ASEAN-US relations under the current Trump administration.

Wang Huiyao, founder and president of Beijing-based independent think tank the Center for China and Globalization, attributes the positive sentiment toward China to decades of consistent economic cooperation that has delivered broad-based prosperity across the region. “China has contributed significantly to prosperity in Southeast Asia and Asia generally, and has become the biggest trading partner for all ASEAN countries. And that boom is still continuing,” Wang said, adding that there remains significant room for both China and ASEAN to deepen collaboration across sectors.

The survey also identified key sources of negative sentiment toward the US: 43.4% of respondents cited the US’s regular use of sanctions, tariffs, and coercive trade measures against other nations as a top concern that erodes positive views of Washington. This shift marks a notable move toward geoeconomic anxiety becoming the primary source of regional unease about US engagement in Southeast Asia.

Alongside tracking perceptions of US-China competition, the 2026 survey captured a broad range of other top regional priorities for respondents, including climate change, transnational global scam operations, disputes in the South China Sea, the ongoing political crisis in Myanmar, the Thailand-Cambodia border standoff, and the long-term institutional development of ASEAN itself.

On Wednesday evening, a massive crowd of Japanese demonstrators assembled outside the National Diet Building in central Tokyo, mounting a public rebuke of the current administration’s sweeping military policy changes that threaten to erode the country’s post-WWII pacifist constitutional framework. The demonstration, organized by a coalition of Japanese civic groups opposed to constitutional revision, drew an estimated 30,000 attendees, who carried hand-painted signs reading “Protect Article 9”, “No War”, and “Takaichi Government Step Down Now”, while chanting unified calls to reject constitutional amendments and avert future conflict.

The rally in Tokyo was just the centerpiece of a coordinated national action: according to local Japanese outlet Tokyo Shimbun, parallel demonstrations opposing the government’s policy shifts were held at more than 130 locations across the country the same day, uniting activists, concerned citizens, and constitutional scholars behind a shared goal of safeguarding Japan’s 79-year-old pacifist founding document.

For many protesters, the government’s latest moves directly contradict the core values Japan has embraced since the end of World War II. “As a nation that survived atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan should carry the permanent vow of ‘never waging war again’ as a non-negotiable part of our national identity,” said protester Fujimoto, one of the demonstrators who spoke out against the new policies. Fujimoto noted that the deployment of long-range missiles and the planned rollback of lethal arms export restrictions run directly counter to the pacifist principles codified in the constitution, questioning how offensive weapons can be framed as a legitimate measure of self-defense. “Exporting weapons that will only fuel armed conflicts around the world is simply unacceptable,” she added.

Another protester, Kin, echoed that frustration, arguing that the series of recent military policy changes not only violate the constitution but also reflect a growing pattern of the administration disregarding Japan’s foundational legal framework. “The government is increasingly acting without respect for the principles that have kept our country at peace for decades,” he said.

Japan’s post-war constitution, which entered into force in 1947, earned its reputation as a pacifist founding document through its landmark Article 9, which forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and rejects the threat or use of military force as a tool for resolving international disputes. For nearly 80 years, the document has anchored Japan’s “exclusively defense-oriented” national security policy, limiting the country’s military role and banning most exports of lethal weapons.

But that long-standing framework is now facing unprecedented change under the administration led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. On March 31, the government deployed long-range offensive missiles equipped with “enemy base strike capabilities” to military bases in Kumamoto and Shizuoka prefectures, marking a major break from previous defense policy. Japanese media has also confirmed that the Takaichi administration is on track to revise the country’s “Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology” and its associated implementation guidelines by the end of April 2026, a change that would open the door to full exports of lethal weapons to foreign nations.

The rapid succession of military policy shifts has sparked widespread anger and alarm across Japanese civil society. Critics warn that the changes amount to a quiet abandonment of Japan’s long-held exclusively defense-oriented policy, and represent a direct threat to the pacifist constitution that has guided the country’s peace and security for nearly eight decades.